The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [58]
“Where’d you go to school?”
“I’m not from here, not originally. We moved here my last year of high school and I didn’t bother going anywhere.” Her tone borders on rude.
“Well, I still might be interested in the answer, did you ever think of that?”
“No. People here, they only ask that so they can play ‘Do you know.’ I’ve never lived in a place where people were less interested in people not from here.”
“I’m sure lots of people are interested in you,” he says, trying to stick up for his hometown and flatter her at the same time.
“If by people you mean men and if by interested you mean want to fuck me, yeah, then some are.”
He hates women who use that kind of language. He also has a hard-on. Which she notices, and tries not to.
“Doesn’t it seem like spring’s never going to come?” she asks the room in general. “I grew up in Florida. I cannot deal with these winters much longer.” Softer, to him. “I got a guy. He’s a good guy. You know that.”
She’s being kind, the most insulting thing she could ever be. And just because she has a good guy—what did she mean, “You know that”—doesn’t mean she’s happy with him. She would definitely fuck someone else. Just not him. Not that he asked, by the way. She shouldn’t be so full of herself. Popping a boner was a reflex, nothing more. His stomach had been known to growl when he couldn’t be less interested in food. Fuck her. No—don’t fuck her. He won’t even whack off to her, although he was thinking about doing that a little later.
She glances at her watch. “I’m going to be late. And now I gotta make it through a six-hour shift with no cigarettes.”
He takes out his pack and offers it to her.
“Marlboros?”
“You were expecting maybe Virginia Slims?”
She laughs, selects two, as if picking chocolates from a box, as if one might be better than another. “You’re a nice guy, Hank.”
“Tim.”
“Right.”
He is a nice guy. Having a temper doesn’t mean you are a bad guy, just that you were born with a shorter fuse, less tolerance for bullshit. No one blames short-legged people for not being able to walk with longer strides. How can people hold him accountable for his temper? Plus, he gets mad only when people fuck up. He always has a reason for what he does. He’s not a bully. True, sometimes he yells at his kids or Doris, but he has his reasons. He’s trying to explain things to them. What the light bill is every month. Why they can’t have a dog or a cat. He’s trying to get everyone else to join him here on Planet Earth.
“You know, maybe the adults should get together, have dinner sometime.”
“The four of us, or do we have to invite the good doctor and the grand lady?”
He misunderstands this for a second, thinks she said grandbaby. “Oh, the Robisons.”
She makes a face. “I don’t really know him. Her—”
This is the kind of woman talk he usually disdains, pure gossip, petty hurts over who said what or wore what, the kind of bullshit that Doris brings home from the altar guild, the unending chatter about so-and-so trying to get in good with Father Whosis. But there is something intriguing about Rita’s dislike of Tally Robison. Something earned.
“Just the four of us,” he says, knowing he can’t afford a night out until he finds work again, knowing Doris has no desire to go out, knowing he would be ashamed to be seen with her, the way she looks now. She would seem even more washed out and dried up alongside juicy, vivid Rita.
“Maybe,” she says. “If that no-good daughter of mine could be trusted to watch her younger brother for even an evening.”
He watches her go. She has a sweet ass, an upside-down heart in that tight skirt. He hasn’t been rejected, exactly. You can’t be rejected if you never enter the race. He’s a married guy, their kids are friends, or were. Of course they’ll never go out as couples. Too dangerous.
Over the next few weeks, it seems the most natural thing to take the back way home, along Purnell Drive, and stare up the hill at the town houses, not that he knows which one is hers. He imagines